Art and theater reviews covering Seattle to Olympia, Washington, with other art, literature and personal commentary.
If you want to ask a question about any of the shows reviewed here please email the producing venue (theater or gallery) or email me at alec@alecclayton.com. If you post questions in the comment section the answer might get lost.

Friday, December 27, 2013

If we can
trust the evidence of the past three months, Salon Refu in Olympia is now one
of the best art galleries between Seattle and Portland. And Mary Randlett is
the most celebrated photographer in the Pacific Northwest.

Recognized as
an outstanding landscape photographer and celebrated for her marvelous
sensitivity to the unique Northwest light, Randlett is one of the few surviving
members of the Northwest School; she has shot portraits of all the great
artists from Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan and Guy Anderson to Mike Spafford,
and has been represented in some of the best museums.

Now a large
selection on her landscape photographs is on display at Salon Refu — black and
white photos that show an unerring eye for light and the subtleties of gray
tone and the ability to capture the perfect moment: when the sun lines up with
a silhouetted tree or rock or when a shadow highlights a fish in shallow water.

Artist and
friend Jeffree Stewart wrote of her photographs, “They’re quiet, like mist,
revealing light that moves over waters dark as ink.”

In looking at
her pictures at Salon Refu I noticed that she has a particular penchant for
finding the single, isolated image like a tree on top of a cliff with nothing
else around. If we were to step back for a wider view we may see many other
trees, but in her photo that one tree stands alone in quiet beauty.

You see it in
the single dark log lying across ripples of water in “Shoalwater Bay” or in an
untitled photo from July1999 with the aforementioned single naked tree standing
on top of a ridge on Mount Rainier where a snow plow has recently pass through,
or in a fish on its side underwater framed by shadows of trees on the bank in a
photographed titled “Spawned Out Humpy.” The fish looks dead and ghost-like.

In “Teal
Slough Esturary” small islands of mud in shallow water look like alligators.

“Lunar Halo”
presents a dramatic picture of a halo around the moon behind a tree on the
horizon — another example of her ability to find the single image isolated in a
larger landscape.

These are but
a handful of the many outstanding photographs in this show

Friday, December 20, 2013

A dozen plus one of Tacoma’s most
well-known artists are represented in the Sixth Annual Greater
Tacoma Community Foundation of Art Award Exhibit with a variety of prints,
drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures. It’s a cornucopia of every
imaginable style and media that can be tastefully crammed into the small
Fulcrum Gallery, and not a dull piece in the show.

Appropriately Peterson’s work is
given a wall all its own in the back gallery. Also in that room is a table
filled with posters from Beautiful Angle and Art Chandry (Chandry’s work is
another plus).

Among the more striking works is
Scott Haydon’s untitled photograph on wrapped canvas of a wide-eyed young boy
in a field of tall grass. The lush gray tones and selective focusing in the
photograph present a beautiful contrast of sharpness and softness.

Holly Senn’s “Blackbird” is a
magnificent nest created of swirling strips of paper cut out of old books and
hanging from the ceiling at a slight angle (dare I say beautiful angle?). Like
a little tornado whipping through the gallery, it is at once powerful and
delicate.

One wall of the front gallery is
filled with four Beautiful Angle prints made of a dense overlapping of letters
in the richest range of red, brown and black imaginable, showing just how
beautiful and emotionally stirring simple block letters printed on a page can
be.

Chandler O’Leary’s “Frisko Freeze,”
ink and watercolor on paper, is a lovely example of a pop art urban landscape in
a style popularized by the photographer Edward Ruscha and by some of David
Hockney’s early bright landscapes.

There are also two large,
free-standing cloth sculptures created in collaboration by Ito and Nyland that
must be seen.

Do yourself a favor and see this
show when you can. Gallery hours are limited.

Friday, December 13, 2013

You are invited to travel through the byways of Eastern
Washington, Oregon and Idaho with photographer Dennis DeHart at Galerie
Fotoland at The Evergreen State College. DeHart, a TESC graduate who teaches
photography at Washington State University, has trained his lens on many of the
out-of-the-way places in the Northwest to provide an insider’s look at the oddities
and the beauty of the region and a look into the devastating effects of
industry on once pristine lands.

He approaches his photographic journey with an artist’s eye
for color and composition and with obvious sympathy, and even reverence, for
the land and its people. Not to mention a quirky sense of humor.

His photographs capture eccentric roadside attractions like
a larger-than-life statue of Paul Bunyan in front of a high school or the
interior of a bar with dollar bills tacked all over the walls, each bill
written upon and signed; or the outer wall of an Elks Lodge with two boarded-up windows and in each window a
painting of an elk —this latter image is like one of Rene Magritte’s paintings
of paintings in which you see a landscape painting on an easel set as part of
the landscape it is a painting of.That
has become an overused trope, but it was brand new when Magritte did it, and it
was brilliant of DeHart to find it in nature and capture it with his camera.

There are haunting images of environmental waste such as a
picture of a wrecking yard in front of a paper mill with an unspoiled mountain
range on the horizon. Hundreds of cars and trucks fill a hillside in this
picture that is aesthetically beautiful but which pictures an environmental
horror. Lining the top of a hillside are bu7mper-to-bumper yellow school buses
like cars on a freight train.

Also haunting is an image of animal bones in a dry-grass
clearing surrounded by sage brush and a similar image of hundreds of clay skeet
pigeons discarded in a field of patchy snow. The orange pigeons look like
strange mushrooms growing in the snowy field.

And then there is the photo of a clumsily painted and
partially painted-over mural of a headless mountain man shooting a bear.

These and many other images are part of a show called Confluences. Galerie Fotoland is located
on the first floor of the Daniel J. Evans Library at TESC.

Saturday, December 7, 2013

The children’s
play Lyle the Crocodile performed by Olympia Family Theater is fun for children
of all ages as proven on the night we saw it by the rapt attention of children
in the audience and by the laughter of adults.

It is a musical
based on two children’s books by Bernard Waber: The House on East 88th Street and Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. Set in New York City in 1950, the Primm
family moves into a new house and discovers, much to their horror, a crocodile
in their bathtub. Their fear and disgust does not last long, because Lyle the
Crocodile (played by Kate Ayers) immediately proves to be funny, joyful and engaging.
He has the ability to know what humans want and give it to them. The Primms
soon accept him as a part of their family, and he becomes a special friend to
their son, Joshua (Mandy Ryle). Their neighbor, however, the aptly named Mr.
Grumps (Ted Ryle), does not take to Lyle at all. Even though Lyle is super
sensitive to the feelings of humans and able to melt even the coldest of
hearts, it takes him a long, long time to make friends with Mr. Grumps.

Grumps, who owns
a department store and the nastiest cat on East 88th Street, ships
Lyle off to the zoo (animal prison). But the Primms, with the help of Hector P.
Valenti (Eric Crawford), pull off a prison break.

Kate Ayers and Eric Crawford

In the course of
the action there is rope jumping, ice skating, a parade, and lots of singing
and dancing by a talented cast. Ayers is a mime without white face in her
interpretation of Lyle. She never speaks with her voice, but speaks volumes
with her gestures. Crawford as Valenti “star of stage and screen” is a kind of
circus master of ceremonies and narrator. Crawford has an entertaining way of
clapping his hands whenever he says his own name, and he combines a kind of
dignified restraint with comic energy. You gotta love the soft shoe dance
number he does with Ayers.

Ted Ryles’
expressions of anger are hilarious — he’s the apotheosis of the nasty guy you
love to hate. He plays the part not only as a grumpy old man but as a nerdy
grumpy old man with a soft spot in his hard, hard heart. Amanda Stevens plays
the uptight and proper Mrs. Nitpicker in a most delightful manner, and she sings
beautifully.

Mr. Grumps’
beloved cat is a puppet that is used to great comic effect.

The set designed
by Jill Carter is up to her usual high standards, and the set pieces move
smoothly and without distraction.

Performances are
Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 1 p.m. with
additional 4:30 matinees Dec. 14 and 21, in the black box theater at South
Puget Sound Community College’s Kenneth J. Minnaert Center for the Arts, 2011
Mottman Rd. SW. Tickets are $10 for children 12 and younger, $12 military, $16
adults, available at www.olytix.org, by phone at 360-753-8586 or at the
Washington Center box office. More information at http://olyft.org/.

"This Saturday marks the third annual Take Your Child to a Bookstore
Day. Begun by author Jenny Milchman, whose debut novel, Cover of Snow
(Ballantine), comes out in January, the day was her way of trying to encourage
other parents to share the joy of being in a bookstore with their
children." Read the article in Publisher's Weekly.

More than 500
bookstores are participating in Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day including in Olympia: Orca Books, 509
E 4th Ave and Half Price Books Outlet at Cooper Point Pavilion, 1520 Cooper
Point Rd. SW.

Tacoma Musical Playhouse’s holiday offering is the perennial
favorite, Annie. It is only the second show to be presented on the completely
renovated stage with its improved sound system. The new stage is much larger,
making it possible for more elaborate sets. The set for this production was
designed by Technical Director Bruce Haasl. It is stunning, with large and
easily moved set pieces that change from the ratty interior to Mrs. Hannigan’s
orphanage to a Hooverville camp to Daddy Warbuck’s palatial home to a radio
station, all with the silhouetted New York skyline in the background
beautifully lighted by John Chenault.

Annie is the feel-good story of how a neglected but
hopeful orphan girl melts the cold heart of a ruthless industrialist during the
great depression, with comic relief provided by a pair of neer-do-well con
artists, Rooster Hannigan (Eric Clausell) and his floozy girlfriend, Lily
(Kathy Kluska).

Loosely based on the comic strip “Little Orphan Annie” by Harold
Gray, the musical touches lightly upon many of the major political and social
issues of the day, including President Roosevelt suddenly hitting upon the
ideas for the New Deal thanks to Annie’s optimism. The story is overly
simplistic – such happy hobos and orphans – but it is emotionally uplifting.

The title character is played in alternating performances by
two seventh graders. Madison Watkins is a student at Harbor Ridge in Gig
Harbor. She was recently seen in The Sound of Music and as the young Cosette
in Les Misérables. Julia Wyman goes to Lighthouse Christian School. She was
also in The Sound of Music and was most recently in the Seattle Opera Youth
Chorus performances of Our Earth and Turandot.

Veteran actor Sharry O’Hare in the role of Mrs. Hannigan lights
up the stage in one of the best performances I’ve seen from her. This is a
demanding role, and O’Hare plays it with confidence and panache. It’s as if the
character created the actor instead of the other way around. In her interpretation,
Mrs. Hannigan is a saucy and sexy old lady with a heart as hard as steel. Her
every move is comic perfection, and her singing and dancing is delightful.

Also outstanding is Clausell as the irrepressible Rooster.
It helps that he has arms and legs that are so long they seem to stretch from
one side of the big new stage to the other. His dancing and shuffling with
flapping limbs on the wonderful song, “Easy Street” with Lily and Hannigan is
hilarious and classic.

Another veteran actor, Mark Rake-Marona (seen in countless
TMP shows) plays Daddy Warbucks. In some versions Warbucks comes across as mean
and heartless at first and gradually becomes more likable, but Rake-Marona
plays him as kindhearted from the start, despite being a man who gets his name
from war profiteering and who is totally out of touch with the real world.

Warbuck’s trusty assistant, Grace Farrell, is played with
restraint and class by Leischen Moore, who sings beautifully.

The night I saw the show Warbuck’s butler was played by the
director and choreographer, Jon Douglas Rake, who was not listed in the program
as was apparently filling in which he did nicely.

There was also a chorus of orphan girls who were sweet and
loveable and who sang and danced admirably on big production numbers like “Hard
Knock Life” and “Little Girls.”

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About Me

I am an artist and writer living in Olympia, Washington. I write an art review column, a theater review column and arts features for the Weekly Volcano, a community theater review column for The (Tacoma) News Tribune and regular arts features for OLY ARTS (Olympia).
My published novels are: This Is Me, Debbi, David; Tupelo; The Freedom Trilogy (a three-book series consisting of The Backside of Nowhere, Return to Freedom and Visual Liberties); Reunion at the Wetside; The Wives of Marty Winters; Imprudent Zeal and Until the Dawn. I've also published a book on art, As If Art Matters. All are available on amazon.com.
I grew up in Tupelo and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and have been living in the Pacific Northwest since 1988 where I am active in many progressive organizations such as PFLAG (Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).